"THESES
ON ART" FROM THE LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST ARTISTS;London UK, 1972.Introduction from Alliance
for web presentation (Alliance 2000).The "Theses on Art", were put
forward in 1972, by the "League of Socialist Artists";and the "Marxist-Leninist
Organisation of Britain (MLOB)".The latter was the progenitor
of the Communist League (CL).This article was first re-printed
by Alliance in hard copy with poems of Nazim Hikmet, as illustrated by
the Socialist artist Maureen Scott, in issue number 8.We have still not found a better
and more concise and clear expression of Socialist aesthetics and thus
offer this in web form.It is preceded by short introductions
to the First and the Second Editons.After the "Theses", is a short
"Manifesto Of Socialist Arts".This, will form the first part
of an on-going series on socialist aesthetics.INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST
EDITION

Of all spheres of Marxist-Leninist science, none has
been so neglected, both by its classic founders and subsequent practitioners,
as that of aesthetics. So far as the written heritage of Marx, Engels and
Lenin is concerned, they were all to one degree or another compelled by
the intensity of the struggle to concentrate their attention almost exclusively
on problems more directly and closely relevant to the class struggle of
the proletariat. In the case of J. V. Stalin an admittedly altogether larger
contribution was made, but this again was restricted to certain fundamental
theoretical questions largely concerned with the relationship between base
and superstructure. ('Marxism and Linguistics')

The two names most closely associated with the development
of Marxist aesthetics are, without doubt, Andrei Zhdanov and Georg Lukacs
(Cf. Speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers: A. Zhdanov;
and Lukacs’ many works of theory and criticism, of which 'The Historical
Novel' is perhaps the most important). As regards problems relating more
generally

to questions of reflective and effective content, it
was Zhdanov who took the vitally important initiative, at a crucial moment
in the history of the --Soviet Union and the CPSU(B), to combat various
manifestations of schematic (mechanical or idealist distortions in the
realisation of effective content) and formalism (abdication from the need
to develop content through concentration on questions of form, not to illuminate
and express an effective content, but for their own sake).

On the other hand, the work of Lukacs - so much lengthier,
more complete and systematised than Zhdanov's speeches - manifests certain
tendencies

towards over-estimating the value of classical critical
realism in the literature of the bourgeoisie, and to evaluate these on
an equal level with socialist realism to the detriment of the latter. Furthermore,
since the collapse of the international communist movement to modern revisionism
subsequent upon the death of J.V. Stalin, Lukacs has been at pains to repudiate
his earlier correct, not to say pioneering, work and is now performing
yeoman service on behalf of the right-revisionist centre in Moscow. This
he is doing by denying in general any validity whatever of aesthetics as
a science - thereby negating both his own earlier work and the objective
growth and subjective need by the class conscious revolutionary proletariat
wherever it may arise, of an art and Literature fully capable of expressing
the world view and historical destiny of the proletariat as the prime mover
of the socialist revolution.

The experience of past revolutionary movements of the
proletariat - in particular in such developed monopoly capitalist countries
as Germany, France, Britain and Italy before the rise of modern revisionism
- reveals that, whereas revolutionary art may have been considered at that
time as very much a secondary matter - as almost a luxury, in fact - today
it has become a prime necessity to the building of any revolutionary
proletarian mass movement in those countries. The tremendously intensified
and wide-spread scale on which fetishistic, sensuously degraded and formalist
art is being deployed for the purpose of achieving the more-or-less universal
corruption of standards of judgment, sensitivity of emotional response
and, ultimately, stultification of intellectual insight and capacity amongst
ever more numerous sections of the working people, renders the task of
neutralising this poison through the creation of an alternative organised
network of centres of collective, proletarian cultural and artistic work
of, by and for the class conscious revolutionary proletariat one of
the fundamental prerequisites for the growth of the revolutionary mass
movement, the mass base of the socialist revolution, to the necessary level
of overwhelming superiority of forces which is indispensable if the vastly
powerful and predatory state apparatus of monopoly capital is to be smashed
and destroyed and the state of the democratic dictatorship of the working
class is to achieve final victory. This work of revolutionary creativity
and creation will form a vitally important part of the process of growth
and the steady consolidation day by day of the structure and cohesive organisation
of the revolutionary Red Front.

This great and growing regenerative cultural front,
the inspirer and mobiliser of the working masses, the agency for their
liberation from the soporific anodyne of culture-reaction, would enable
workers and working people at all levels of class consciousness and militancy,
each level through its appropriate forms, to contribute to the growth of
the new proletarian-socialist culture which, like the socialist revolution
itself, must and can only be born and grow strong out of that cleansing
and purifying crucible of experience which is the bitter, steely hard,
pitilessly uncompromising and all-demanding revolutionary class struggle
which will surely arise and develop throughout the coming corporate-fascist
era of capitalism, the eleventh hour of capitalism's doom.

It is for all these reasons, of course, that the concealed
representatives of monopoly capital posing within the ranks of the proletariat
as 'progressive artists', at the head of which stand those hardened enemies
of the working class and socialism, the modern revisionists and trotskyites,
have obstructed the development of socialist aesthetics. In two recently
published journals in particular - Artery', the journal of the revisionist
Communist Party's artists group, and '7 Days', the latest essay in pop-kitsch
produced by the businessmen of the ‘New Left' - have these reactionary
tasks been taken up. Thus, in the October 1971 edition of "Artery", we
read, in an article by the revisionist 'theoretician' Mike Steadman:

'Again, whilst the notion of Realism may be a very
powerful tool in literary criticism, or in criticism of the visual arts,
we are often guilty of quite grandiosely exterpolating and extending this
analysis from one sort of art form, where it may be applicable, to other
forms where it is not. Correspondingly, I believe that our all too frequent
insistence that art is good art which most furthers the class struggle
is another and related criterion which collapses before the same objection.
My feeling is, that we have failed to develop a Marxist theory of art despite
the fact of brilliant work by individual theoreticians in particular fields."
('Artery', page 5).

By propagating this kind of liberal eclecticism, the treacherous
revisionists attempt at one and the same time to 'destroy' the unity of
Marxist-Leninist theory and to give themselves the airs of ‘learned fools’,
as Lenin once called this type of class traitor.

A little further we read:

'The battle, the class struggle in art, is between
the way in which industrial society alienates the human being and what
we believe is to be the way in which we should struggle against this. That
is, in raising as a political goal, raising in our daily lives, the need
to expand, continuously, the art of a free creative labour.' (ibid; p 6).

So, in the place of the struggle to mobilise and build
up the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat stage by stage in
preparation for the socialist revolution, we are presented with the misty
goal of a mythical struggle --so fine-sounding in words, but devoid of
any real class significance - to realise 'free creative labour' even whilst
capitalist production relations and the dictatorship of the capitalist
class through its oppressive state apparatus still exist. The work of the
co-partners of, revisionism in this counter-revolutionary task, the trotskyites,
complements the encouragement of bourgeois dictatorship in the arts by
advocating the 'progressive' character of the distorted drug-orientated
'underground culture' fanned by 'capitalism and attacking the genuine struggle
for a' revolutionary culture.

In the coming final stage of growth of the proletarian-socialist
revolution which lies ahead, both in the developed countries and on a world
scale, the revolutionary proletariat will need its Gorkys, its Ostrovskys,
its Anna Seghers. It is as a concise, simple and yet fully comprehensive
theoretical guide to action in commencing upon the long and difficult
tasks revealed in this guide that the Provisional Committee of the Union
of Socialist Artists has prepared and published this outline of socialist
principles of aesthetic science. Long and fruitfully may it serve all fighters
for a revolutionary art underlying and illuminating the hard road to the
victory of the proletarian-socialist revolution!Provisional Committee,LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST ARTISTS;March 1972.

The LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST ARTISTS pledges themselves:a) To work for socialism - a society based on the
political power of the working people in which production is planned in
their interests.

b) To work towards the development of a revolutionary
art and to place that art at the service of the working people, in broad
affiliation with the Red Front Movement and under the overall leadership
of the Marxist--Leninist Organisation of Britain, in such a way that it
functions as an inspiration and a weapon to them in the class struggle
and in the emerging revolutionary movement to establish and maintain a
socialist society.

Printed and published by the League of Socialist Artists.INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITIONThe appearance of a second and revised edition of
the "Theses on Art" requires no lengthy comment. The fact that a first
printing of 1,000 copies should have been exhausted in the relatively short
space of 12 months alone provides a sufficient indication that the Theses
are beginning to find their proper application as a theoretical guide to
action for a small but growing number of worker-artists with a developing
revolutionary-socialist consciousness and understand ing, and who are anxious
to place their talents at the service of the historic cause of the working
class.

In this connection, it is perhaps not accidental that
the publication of the Theses some eighteen months ago should have marked
the beginning of a period in which the League of Socialist Artists has
undergone a small but significant growth in the scope and quality of its
tasks and activities. Typical of these have been the formation of the League
of Socialist Artists Film Unit and the initiation of work to produce a
series of propaganda films, and also the development of the poster workshop.

Apart from the exhaustion of available stocks and the
correction of a few textual errors, the publication of a 2nd Edition has
to a large degree been motivated by the need to re-formulate and extend
the section on Beauty, in order to bring this hitherto highly esoteric
- but in fact fundamentally important question more fully into line with
the latest advances made in the infant science of dialectical-materialist
revolutionary aesthetics. In particular, the all important psychological
component in the formation of subjective responses to and appreciation
of beauty - hitherto completely ignored by Marxist-Leninists - is now given
its first clear, even if necessarily brief and sketchy outline. The important
task of subjecting this germinal thesis to a complete theoretical elaboration
in the light of the dialectical-materialist scientific method is one which
must and will be taken up and developed further by students of scientific
revolutionary aesthetics at the earliest moment consistent with the maintenance
of essential priorities in the discharge of work and tasks.

Finally, the appearance of this 2nd Edition will, do
doubt, give occasion for still louder and more frenetic accusations of
"dogmatism", "schematism", "intellectual arrogance" and other allegedly
anti-popular sins. That the Theses should have attracted their fair share
of such attacks on the part of Trotskyite, Maoist and other disruptors
and demagogues of petty-bourgeois class orientation was, of course, only
to be expected, and of these there have been not a few, including one from
an American Maoist (the subject of a forthcoming pamphlet) - the only one,
incidentally, which summoned sufficient critical acumen and courage as
to be expressed in written form - which condemns the Theses on the grounds
that they attempt to "decide in words all questions of revolutionary aesthetics",
and that this allegedly "leaves the people out". As Marxist-Leninists,
as revolutionary proletarian-socialist artists we naturally treasure such
attacks and savour them keenly - not, of course, because we ascribe the
slightest objective validity to the ideas they propound, but because they
provide us with a clear and reliable guide, by inverse example, that the
League Of Socialist Artist cadres are working along fundamentally correct
lines and in accordance with theoretical principles which are scientifically
true.

However this may be, the experience of the period since
the publication of the 1st Edition fully confirms the view that the "Theses"
are proving their worth to those who comprehend the role of scientific
Marxist-Leninist theory in the task of solving the vastly intricate and
many-sided problems associated with th further growth and widespread dissemination
of art-works and their corresponding art-forms capable of expressing, in
all their conflict-ridden richness and complexity, the life and struggles
of the working class in general and the proletarian-socialist revolutionary
movement in particular. If we of the League of Socialist Artists have at
least made a beginning in working out these essential theoretical principles
of scientific revolutionary aesthetics, principles which can then assist
tens, later hundreds and ultimately thousands of worker-artists with a
proletarian-socialist consciousness and allegiance to master the media
in which they work and to fashion them into works of socialist realism,
in all art-forms, sufficiently truthful and insighted in content and powerful
and sensitive in form as to arouse the respect and deepen the under-standing
of at least, under present conditions, the most advanced class-conscious
workers, we shall feel justified in the belief that our work has made a
small but valuable contribution to the long and difficult task of mobilising
and building the philosophically and politically conscious proletarian
revolutionary movement and its scientific socialist-Leninist vanguard party.

Provisional Committee, LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST ARTISTS,September 1973

THESES ON ART

ART

Art is a form of production in which the producer
(the artist) endeavours to create, through its product (the work of art),
certain thoughts and feelings in the minds of consumers (those who see,
hear, read etc. his work of art).

In the words of J.V. Stalin:

'The artist is the engineer of the human soul'.

Clearly, it cannot be a matter of indifference to Socialists
what kind of thoughts and feelings works of art create - whether they tend,
objectively, to help forward the working class in its historical task of
destroying the capitalist state in a socialist revolution, of establishing
its own political power and of proceeding to construct a Socialist society;
or whether they tend, objectively, to hold back the working class from
these fundamental tasks.

SUBJECT

The subject of a work of art is simply what
it is about - sunflowers, the Marriage of Figaro, Paradise Lost, the Spartacist
uprising in Berlin, the construction of the Dnieper dam.

CONTENT

The content of a work of art is the character
imparted to its subject. by the artist, a character which reflects the
artist's intellectual and emotional - in short, psychological - attitude
towards his subject.

The content of a work of art comprises two inter-related
components:1) the reflective content, and2) the effective content.

The reflective content of a work of art is the reflection
in this work of art of the artist's world outlook - itself the subjective
expression of his whole life experience. This world outlook is essentially
that of the social class to which the artist belongs or with which he identifies
his interests. The reflective content of a work of art may be described
in terms of the social class which holds the particular world outlook reflected
in this content, or in terms of the social system in which this class is
the ruling class. Thus, we may speak of the capitalist or bourgeois reflective
content of a work of art (where this reflects the world outlook of the
capitalist class or bourgeoisie), and of the working class, proletarian
or socialist reflective content of a work of art (where this reflects the
world outlook of the working class or proletariat, which is the ruling
class in a socialist society).

The effective content of a work of art consists
of the particular thoughts and feelings, which the artist endeavours to
create in the minds of consumers through the work of art concerned. The
effective content of a work of art is described in terms of the social
effects which these thoughts and feelings tend, objectively, to produce:
as progressive (where these thoughts and feelings tend, objectively to
further the development of society) or as reactionary (where these thoughts
and feelings tend, objectively, to hold back or turn back the development
of society).

In the period when the bourgeoisie was playing an objectively
revolutionary role in leading the mass of the people to break the fetters
of feudalism, art with a bourgeois reflective content had a progressive
effective content. Today, when the role of the bourgeoisie is to hold back
the overthrow of the objectively obsolete capitalist social system, art
with a bourgeois reflective content has a reactionary effective content.
The inter-relation between the reflective and effective components of the
content of a work of art is thus a variable one, dependent on the
stage of the development of the society in which the work of art is produced.

The more conscious an artist is of the class basis
of the reflective content of his art and of the social effects of its effective
content, the closer will the two components of the content of his art be
integrated, and the more will the reflective content reinforce the
effective content - the more powerful will be the thoughts and feelings
created by his art.

Before the development of the scientific materialist
conception of history, the basis of which was laid by Karl Marx, an artist
could at the most be only partly conscious of the class basis of the reflective
content of his art and of the social effects of its effective content.

Today it is possible for an artist who has mastered
the scientific materialist conception of history, who has embraced wholeheartedly
and from within the innermost core of his psychological make-up the cause
of the working class and of Socialism, to be fully conscious of the class
basis of the effective content, so that the two components of the content
of his art reinforces the progressive effective content to make it a powerful
ideological weapon in the service of the working class and of Socialism.

FORM

The form of a work of art is the manner in which an
artist constructs his work of art in order to express its content. On the
form of a work of art depends its capacity to communicate its content to
consumers.

The form of a work of art is described in terms of
the degree to which it truthfully reflects its subject, that is, in terms
of the degree of its realism. The further the form of a work of
art departs from realism, the nearer it approaches to abstraction, in which
the form of a work of art reflects its subject in no discernible way. An
abstract painting is composed of shapes and colours, which reflect reality
in no discernible way, an abstract poem is composed of sounds without discernible
meaning, and so on.

AESTHETICS

Questions of quality, of "goodness" and "badness",
in art belong to what is called aesthetics.

To many people aesthetics is a subjective matter, a
question of personal taste. To such people a work of art is "good" to one
person if he likes it, while the same work of art may be "bad' to
another person if he dislikes it.

To scientific Socialists a work of art is good if its
effective content is progressive and its form is such that this effective
content is readily communicable to consumers, that is, if its form is realist.

In the period when the bourgeoisie was playing an objectively
revolutionary role in leading the mass of the people to break the fetters
of feudalism, art with a bourgeois reflective content had a progressive
effective content and, to the extent that it was also realist in form,
it was aesthetically good.

Today, when the role of the bourgeoisie is to hold
back the overthrow of the objectively obsolete capitalist social system,
art with a bourgeois reflective content has a reactionary effective content
and, irrespective of its form, it was aesthetically bad.

Today, aesthetically good art can only be proletarian
socialist in reflective content (and so progressive in effective content)
and realist in form - can only, in other words, take the form of socialist
realism.

BEAUTY

Beauty is that combination of qualities in a work of
art, which affects the fundamental psychological and personality attributes
of a consumer in positive manner. A work of art, which so affects those
attributes, is beautiful to that particular consumer- whilst one
which fails to so affect them is either not beautiful to him - i.e. is
one to which his psychology and personality are either not able to respond
or else-which he finds consciously ugly.

The same work of art may affect the psyche of one consumer
in a positive way and the psyche of another consumer in a negative way
- that is, it may be beautiful to one consumer and ugly to another. The
beauty (or non-beauty, or ugliness) of a work of art is not, therefore,
an objective attribute of a work of art; it is a subjective attribute which
has meaning only in relation to a particular consumer, or to a particular
category of consumers.

Aesthetics is sometimes defined as "the critical appreciation
of beauty". Scientific socialists reject this definition, since the beauty
of a work of art is subjective, relative to a particular consumer or to
a particular category of consumers, while the aesthetic quality of a work
of art is, as has been said, objective, inherent in the work of art
itself.

Whether a particular work of art is beautiful (or non-beautiful,
or ugly) to a particular consumer depends, therefore, on more than mere
sensory perception; it depends on the dialectical interaction and ultimate
synthesis in one affective moment of response of all three of the
above fundamental psychological attributes of personality:

This response is, in turn, dependent upon a complex
of psychological characteristics built up during the consumer’s life experience,
which may be called the consumer’s canons of beauty. The closer
the content and form of a work of art correspond to the consumer's canons
of beauty, the more beautiful it is to him. As the consumer's life experience
continues, as the external world and his relations with it change, so do
his canons of beauty change and develop in and through the psychological
processes described above.

Within a particular society at a particular time, there
are generally accepted canons of beauty just as there are generally
accepted canons of morality, and these are socially determined.
These generally accepted canons of beauty are those which best serve the
interests of that society at that period - in the case of a class-divided
society, those which best serve the interests of the ruling class at that
period. As society changes, or as the interests of the ruling class within
a particular society change, so do the generally accepted canons of beauty
change.

Within a capitalist society in decay, such as that
which exists in Britain at the present time, an aesthetically good socialist
realist work of art affects, generally speaking, the psychological responsiveness
of members of the capitalist class in a negative way; it appears ugly
to them. Furthermore, it is in sharp contradiction with the generally accepted
canons of beautyimposed on decaying capitalist society by the ruling
capitalist class, and so is ugly to all consumers who accept these generally
accepted canons of beauty. Here, therefore, there is a contradiction
between aesthetic quality and beauty. On the other hand, the same work
of art will affect in a positive way the psychological attributes of a
consumer who is thoroughly socialist , who has thrown off the generally
accepted bourgeois canons of beauty in favour of canons of beauty which
serve the interests of the working class; to him it will be beautiful.Here, therefore, there is no contradiction between aesthetic quality
and beauty.

In a capitalist society the canons of beauty of the
ruling capitalist class are, by and large, accepted by the petty bourgeois
intelligentsia - who are, in fact, the main proponents of these canons
of beauty within society. But with the increasing decay of capitalist society
at the stage of advanced imperialism and the consequent rise to dominance
of formalist art, the canons of beauty of the ruling monopoly capitalist
class cease to be "generally accepted", in that they come to be rejected
by the working class. The contradiction between aesthetic quality and the
canons of beauty of the ruling class is now so great that it cannot be
bridged, so far the working class is concerned, even by the use of all
the ideological and propaganda resources at the disposal of the ruling
class – which naturally, seeks to meet the situation by instilling in the
minds of the workers the conception that beauty in art (and even art itself
in all but its crudest, merely soporific, narcotic forms) is inappropriate
for workers. This leads to the workers becoming largely sealed off
from serious art and to the stunting of their sense of beauty, i.e.,
of the capacity to have their personality attributes in any way
affected by serious works of art.

Thus, the awakening of the sense of beauty in the working
class is an important part of the work of Socialist artists. It is in itself
a potentially revolutionary act, an important aspect of the overall
task of generating the revolutionary energies of the working class.

REALISM AND NATURALISM

Realism, the true reflection of reality in a work of
art, does not mean mere photographic representation.

Scientific Socialists understand that, beneath the
surface of something which appears static, the forces of change and development
are at work, so that the thing itself is changing and developing, even
though we cannot see this process on the surface.

True realism, therefore, penetrates beneath the surface
of things to reveal the process of their change. Only scientific Socialism,
the world outlook known as dialectical materialism, provides the key to
penetrating beneath the surface of things; only a Socialist artist who
has made Marxism-Leninism, dialectical materialism, his world outlook,
can, therefore, be a complete realist in the form of his art.

Suppose a writer wishes to reflect in a novel the contemporary
reality in Britain. On the surface one sees a working class which is far
from revolutionary, a youth which has been corrupted on a wider scale than
any previous generation, a country in which Marxist-Leninists can almost
be counted on the fingers.But this is a superficial and false picture. Scientific
socialists, by their analysis of British contemporary capitalist society,
understand that forces are at work which are in process of transforming
the working class into an invincible revolutionary force, led by a strong
vanguard party.

True realism in art, therefore, means the portrayal
not so much of what lies on the surface of things (this is naturalism,
not realism), but of what lies beneath the surface. It also involves the
selection from all the infinite entities that make up reality of
those which are significant in portraying the changing, developing essence
of this reality.

Realism differs also from naturalism in that it permits
deviation from naturalistic representation where this assists in
the fuller expression of the aspect of reality concerned. In satire, in
the cartoon, features are exaggerated not to falsify reality, but to heighten
it.

If an artist paints the grass in a meadow red merely
as a 'gimmick', this falsifies reality. But if he paints the grass in the
exercise yard of the Attica State Prison red, to symbolise the massacre
which took place there in 1971, this may well serve to heighten the realism
of the painting.

Realism differs from naturalism also in that it concentrates
the social essence of individuals into the type. As Maxim Gorky
expresses it in "Literature and Life":

"When a writer describes some shopkeeper, official
or worker of his acquaintance, he is merely producing some more or less
successful likeness of an individual; but such a likeness will remain a
mere photograph, without any socially educative significance, and will
contribute almost nothing either in breadth or in depth to our knowledge
of life and of our fellow men. But if the writer is able to extract from
twenty or fifty or a hundred shopkeepers, officials or workers the characteristic
traits, habits, tastes, gestures, beliefs, mannerisms typical of them as
a class and if he can bring these traits to life in a single shopkeeper,
official or worker, he will have created a type and his work will be a
work of art",

BOURGEOIS CRITICAL REALISM

The unscientific, metaphysical world outlook of the
bourgeois artist - a world outlook which underlies all bourgeois art, whether
its effective content be progressive or reactionary - draws the content
of his work towards one or other of the apparently opposite poles of mystical
idealism, or arid mechanical materialism. It effectively prevents him from
achieving that all-round, universalised, penetrating, developmental understanding
of his subject which constitutes the hallmark of proletarian-socialist
realism.

Since the inherent, objective laws of development of
society are a closed book to the bourgeois artist, metaphysics must for
him take the place of scientific method. Thus, even when the objective
situation of the capitalist class to which the artist belongs is a progressive
one, impelling him towards a progressive effective content in his work,
this content is necessarily limited in its scope, in its insight, in its
treatment of character and society’s processes. He may be capable of revealing
the social evils, which are inherent in capitalist society even in its
progressive stage of development, but he can discern neither the basic
laws of motion of capitalist society nor the true role of the working class
as the social force destined by history to resolve the contradictions of
capitalist society by abolishing it and replacing it by a socialist society.

This type of progressive bourgeois art is termed by
revolutionary Socialists bourgeois critical realism, because it
can reveal in a critical way, through a superficial depiction of character
and events, much of what is wrong with capitalist society, but can neither
probe beneath the surface to reveal the basic causes of those evils nor
point the way forward to their solution in a socialist society.

As far as form is concerned, therefore, bourgeois critical
realism tends towards naturalism rather than realism (as in the work of
such artists as Charles Dickens, Emile Zola and Gustav Flaubert). In the
most developed work of bourgeois critical realism, however, (such as those
of Ludwig van Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Georg Buchner, Vincent van Gogh and
Gustav Mahler) a close approximation to true realism in form is realised.

Socialist realism bases itself upon and further develops
the finest achievements of bourgeois critical realism, overcoming in the
course of this development the limitations of content and form of the latter
in order to achieve a truthful, penetrating, developmental and powerfully
moving treatment of reality.

DISTORTED REALISM

Art which directly serves the interests of the
capitalist class in the period of the decay of its social usefulness is
at first glance realist in form, in that its images are recognisable reflections
of real life in comparison with the abstractions, which make up the greater
part of modern painting with a bourgeois content. This must be so in order
that its reactionary effective content the thoughts or feelings which serve
the interests of the capitalist class may be communicated to consumers.
But because, in the period of the decay and disintegration of capitalist
society, a truly realistic representation of the world cannot serve the
interests of the capitalist class, its images are necessarily distortions
of reality.

In a play with a bourgeois content about a strike,
the workers may be physically recognisable as workers in that they wear
overalls, live in council flats, etc. But they are distorted, in general,
into sheep-like figures, easily led by some militant leader, who because
of some psychopathological aggressive complex or because he is in the service
of a foreign power, "pulls them out" on a futile strike which harms their
interests.

FORMALISM

But for every hack artist who - is prepared to sell
his integrity to the capitalist class for money, there are a dozen honest
artists. These artists see the corruption, exploitation and immorality,
which are all pervading features of capitalism in decay. Unless, therefore,
they are revolutionary Socialists who can portray this reality truthfully
with a Socialist content, they find the real world too unpleasant to reflect
truthfully in their work. They therefore repudiate content more or less
completely, take their stand on the slogan "Art for art's sake" (which
rejects the conception of social content in art) and base their art purely
on form: on abstract or semi-abstract images. It is this repudiation of
content and concentration on form that revolutionary Socialists call "formalism".

NATIONAL FORM AND COSMOPOLITANISM

All art is necessarily the product of a particular
community, and the reality of this community is national in substance;
it is the reality of a particular nation, the characteristics of which
are determined by the language, geography, economic life, psychological
make-up and culture of that nation.Art which is truly realistic in form, therefore, is
also national in form. Furthermore, it is built upon and further
develops that part of the cultural heritage of the nation which is progressive
in its effective content.

Art which repudiates the national in its form in the
direction of cosmopolitanism also deviates, therefore, from
realism.

RELATION BETWEEN CONTENT AND
FORM.

In the relation between content and form in art, it
is content which - at least in the broad developmental sense - determines
the form in and through which this content is realised.

As, within a particular society, the existing mode
of production becomes moribund, and the objective and subjective conditions
mature for the birth of a new,higher mode of production ( in
our epoch, Socialism ), new, political, ideological and other social factors
impinge upon the life experience of the artist. To the extent that he absorbs
the world outlook of the rising class

whose interests are bound up with the, coming new mode
of production (in our epoch, the world outlook of the working class), his
art takes on a new reflective content and a new progressive effective content.
This ultimately leads him to discard, or at least to modify positively,
the existing, dominant art forms and to develop new ones more suited to
act as expressions of this new content.

When Ludwig van Beethoven began to compose, he was
content to use the classical sonata form he inherited from Mozart and Haydn,
But at a certain stage in the maturing of the bourgeois reflective content
and the progressive effective content of his music, he became aware that
the complexity, power and objective realism of his sound-world was suffering
through the attempt to pour new wine into old bottles. He therefore found
it necessary to create a new symphonic form, that of the choral symphony,
in which the scope, emotional impact and intelligibility of this content
was greatly enhanced in complexity and degree of integration, partly through
the inclusion of the choral poem, partly through the much greater fluidity
and expressive flexibility of the thematic structure and the melodic line
itself.

A similar process is to be, observed in the development
of the modern novel, in particular in the transition from limited, naturalistically
stunted critical realism of the revolutionary bourgeoisie ( e.g., Emile
Zola, Thomas Mann) to the socially penetrating insight achieved in the
socialist realist literature of the revolutionary working class (e.g.,
Maxim Gorki).

In the relation between content and form, it is, therefore,
content which plays the primary role, while form arises out of and
serves content as its vehicle of expression. It is the function of technique
to serve content and form equally.

It must be understood, however, that the content of
a work of art does not determine its form in any direct, mechanical way,
but dialectically - that is to say, by creating the general conditions
in and through which a change of form becomes necessary, or in which the
adoption of one form as against another becomes preferable. Were this not
so, the task of a Marxist-Leninist Party or of such organisations as Socialist
Artists in the sphere of art could be confined to political education;
an artist who acquired the political outlook of revolutionary Socialism
and the desire to make the content of his art Socialist would be unable
to create works of art in any but a realist form. In fact, an artist may
be a revolutionary Socialist, a Marxist-Leninist, in every sphere but that
of aesthetics, determined that every one of his artistic creations shall
be imbued with a Socialist content - yet he may produce art which is non-realist
in form.

While the content of a work of art is determined by
the social outlook of the artist, its form is determined by his aesthetic
outlook and his mastery of technique at the moment of its creation.
It is, therefore, the task of the Marxist-Leninist Party and of such organisations
as Socialist Artists to educate artists not only in the principles of revolutionary
Socialism (so that their art may be imbued with Socialist content) but
also in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and in technique, so that this content
may be expressed in appropriate realist form.

Content is not primary and form secondary because the
former is more important than the latter. A work of art which is
Socialist in content but non-realist in form lacks the capacity to communicate
its socialist content to consumers; it is of no more value to the working
class - and so is of no higher aesthetic quality - than a work of art which
is bourgeois in content. Form and content are of equal importance for
the Socialist artist. But the primacy of content over form must be
recognised if the artist is to achieve the fullest realisation of form
in the service of content, and of technique in the service of both.

REVISIONISM AND ART

Revisionism is a perversion of Marxism-Leninism to
serve the interests of the capitalist class.The modern revisionists, for the most part, reject
the Marxist-Leninist concepts of progressive and reactionary effective
content in art. They hold that aesthetic questions – i.e. questions of
quality in art - must be confined to questions of craftsmanship.

On the basis that art which directly serves the interests
of the capitalist class is realist in form (as discussed above), they hold
that "revolutionary art" must break with the "reactionary" heritage of
realist -art and embrace cosmopolitanism.

To the modern revisionists, the changed role of art
in a socialist society means no more than the wider availability of
art to the working people.

But,clearly, the interests of the working
class and of socialism are not served by the wider availability, to the
working people of art which serve's the interests of the capitalist class
– the class enemy of the working-class.In fact, art which serves the interests of the capitalist
class is widely available to the working people, within a capitalist society.
A worker has little difficulty in obtaining access to the strip cartoons
in the "Daily Mirror"; he can watch "Coronation Street" on TV; he can listen
to "pop" music almost throughout his spare time; he can visit a "working
man’s club"; and watch strip-tease shows every week-end.

The whole educational and propaganda apparatus of the
ruling class in capitalist society is directed towards inculcating the
idea: that these forms of "art" are appropriate for working people, while
ballet and painting are for upper class homosexuals.

But the "art" which the ruling capitalist class directs
to the working class is designed not only to make profits for its sponsors,
but also to "divert" the working class, to drug them into acceptance
of their role as an exploited class.

In the former socialist societies of Eastern Europe,
the modern revisionists took the first steps towards the restoration of
capitalism in the sphere of art. In the name of "artistic freedom", they
supported the introduction of art with a bourgeois content, declaring that
the Marxist-Leninists had no business to seek to "interfere" in artistic
questions.The introduction of art with a decadent bourgeois
content served as preliminary ideological preparation for the introduction
of bourgeois ideas in the sphere of economics and politics.

THE BATTLE OF IDEAS IN ART

The battle of ideas in art - between ideas which serve
the interests of the working-class and those which serve the interests
of the capitalist class, between the ideas of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics
and those of revisionist aesthetics - reflects the class struggle in society
between the working class and the capitalist class.

It is the task of Socialist artists to take their stand
in this battle firmly on the side of the working class, to develop art
which is Socialist in content and realist in form, - to make of their art
a weapon in the struggle of the working class to destroy the capitalist
state and construct a Socialist society.

"END OF THESES"

FROM THE MANIFESTO OF THE LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST ARTISTS

The epoch in which, as workers and artists, we live
and pursue our creative work is one which bears as its fundamental feature
the decay of the capitalist system based on exploitation and oppression
and the maturing of the objective conditions making possible its final
destruction at the hands of the revolutionary working people.

The supreme task of historical creation confronting
all workers, of which we artists to an increasing degree are becoming a
social part, is, to develop the science of the proletarian socialist revolution,
Marxism-Leninism, in theory and in practice;

To organise to carry through that revolution to the
end; thereby to destroy the capitalist system, root and branch, in country
after country and in every quarter of the globe. . .

The securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly
rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through
the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the
basis of higher techniques.

It is within this revolutionary historical context
that the confines of class dominated society, with its anti-human inheritance
of exploitation, poverty and war, will be overcome and the objective social
conditions created for the expansion of the boundaries of man's knowledge
and mastery of the natural universe around him.

Within these overall historic tasks of the proletarian-socialist
revolution a role of unprecedented importance devolves upon the arts, and
hence upon creative artists. For it is precisely through art that science,
the knowledge--understanding and experience of the laws of motion of the
universe, including particularly of human society, is distilled into generalised,
concentrated form, is transmuted into those at one and the same time concrete
and typical, images which are capable of arousing the most profound and
stirring emotions -of the human soul, even whilst it is developing conscious
intellectual awareness of the objective phenomena which those images symbolise
and typify.

Thus artists, whether of the visual or the dramatic
arts, are no less than "engineers of the human soul"(J.V. Stalin);

and a correspondingly vital significance attaches to
their work in furtherance of that highest single creative task of the modern
epoch: the carrying through to victory of the world proletarian - socialist
revolution.

Taking the above principles as our fundamental guide,
we Socialist Artists hold that art is a definite form of social consciousness.
Proletarian socialist art is a reflection in artistic form of the class
struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, which lies at the heart of
all social reality. The method of artistic creation of proletarian-socialist
art is therefore proletarian-socialist realism. There can be no art without
a fundamental philosophy, a basic world view.

And since all philosophy, all world views, are class
philosophy, the world view of a class, there can likewise be no art which
is not class art. The philosophical foundation of proletarian-socialist
realism is dialectical materialism which provides all forms-of artistic
sensibility with the objective scientific tool for cognising truthfully
the real world.

Proletarian-socialist realism rests upon the firm foundation
of human culture as a whole which has developed historically within class
society. It recognises that the working class must utilise the finest and
highest products of all previous culture in order to create there from
the general basis for the development of its own infinitely more sensible,
more dramatically intense and varied art and culture. It recognises that
the highest achievement of all past art is critical realism. Proletarian
socialist realism begins where this critical realism ends, distils from
it all that was revealing of social reality, overcomes its weaknesses and
one sided-nesses and thereby elevates art to a new and higher stage.

Proletarian-socialist realism is an active, affirmative
realism. It upholds the principle of "being as deed". Such an affirmative
view of human practice is indissolubly fused together with a critical attitude
towards the art of the past and a revolutionary-romantic consciousness
of contemporary social and class reality in the light of the socialist
future. In this sense proletarian-socialist realism anticipates creatively
the future.

Proletarian-socialist realism possesses as one of the
prime features of its aesthetic the creation of generally valid social
characters and figures who express in their innermost being the laws of
motion of history and society as a whole. Proletarian-socialist realism
requires the delineation of typical characters living and moving in atypical
environment and under typical conditions. It requires a historically and
socially concrete typicalisation of dramaturgical elements in works of
art, but this typicalisation must be combined with, the utmost individuality
and qualitative distinctness of characters and figures, and must avoid
all tendencies towards stereotyped caricatures.

Proletarian-socialist realism maintains that, for a
genuinely progressive, revolutionary art serving the proletarian-socialist
revolution, content is primary and plays the definitive role within any
one work of art, whilst form, which itself is of vital significance to
the artistically and aesthetically affective properties of the work, is
secondary and reflects and serves that content. Thus we stand for the unity
of form and content based on the primacy of content.

Being aware of the unbridgeable abyss in the cultural
superstructure of decaying capitalism, we Socialist Artists declare our
aims and work to stand completely apart from and in irreconcilable-opposition
to the formalism and commodity fetishism of capitalist art- which serves
at one and the same time - to mystify the movement and conflict of social
classes, to preach and inculcate the helplessness of man before the "unknowable"
universe and the "atomic chaos" of the "existentialist" society, as also
to provide the effete, luxury loving ruling class with those soporific,
sensationalised and alienated titbits which might, for an hour or a day,
provide an anodyne to bring forgetfulness of the moment of doom for their
class which the approaching proletarian socialist revolution is bringing
ever nearer. In opposition to this we declare our aim to be the pursuit,
the active construction and direction of an art which, in all its richness,
its myriad fronts and facets; reflects and serves the struggle of the working
people for socialism and communism; and which develops for this purpose
aesthetic forms of expression which are at one and the same time organically
free in relation to their content and yet ordered by the single function
of serving to reflect that content; complex and many-sided as the realist
stuff itself which they express - -yet unified by a single fundamental
principle: to express truthfully the real world of class conflict and revolutionary
mobilisation which lies beneath the surface of that average spontaneous
activity which is all the vulgar empiricist or idealist mystifier can perceive,
and who for that reason is at the mercy of every reactionary wind that
blows from out of the vortex of disintegrating capitalism.

In place of the pop art, mobile junk, psychedelic and
other fringe lunancy of decaying capitalist art we will erect an art which
expresses the dignity of working people, into which life is breathed from
out of their very struggles; whether for bread, for peace or for socialism;
an art which leads to the growth of a working class culture and which,
in the widest and most fundamental sense creates a visual and dramatic
image of the socialist future, an assertive art of the revolutionary class
in society, the producers of all material and cultural values. Fundamental
to our aims, therefore, is that of fulfilling a vanguard role in teaching,
educating, organising and raising the cultural values of this only revolutionary
class, in a developed capitalist society, the proletariat.

Because we are workers alongside the mass of working
people as a whole; because we increasingly sell our labour power firstly
in order to live but increasingly also in order to create; and because
we can expect no philanthropy from capital, for our art reflects the struggle
of workers againstcapital and is thus persecuted and outlawed - along
with all other revolutionary activity, we Socialist Artists must possess
our own collective organisation under the direction of the vanguard Marxist-Leninist
party, the overall instrument of the future proletarian-socialist revolution,
a revolutionary, democratic union of artists with the clear and simple
aim:

"Our art must serve revolutionary politics. We place
our art unreservedly at the service of the working class."Provisional Committee, The League of Socialist Artists;August 1973.